Atomic force microscopy articles from across Nature Portfolio

This study shows how SARS-CoV-2 fusion peptides assemble and reshape membranes, revealing cooperative mechanisms that lower barriers to viral entry and offering principles for designing antiviral and membrane-responsive nanomaterials.

AFM nanoindentation study reveals unique biomechanical properties of corneocytes, demonstrating glassy polymer-like elasticity and complex viscoplastic behaviour crucial for understanding skin mechanics.

Detecting proton arrangements and quantum behavior at the atomic level is a challenge. Here, the authors use atomic force spectroscopy to reveal symmetry breaking in the proton arrangement in cyclic hydrogen bonds caused by nuclear quantum effects.

Kozai, Fernandez-Martinez et al. use high-speed atomic force microscopy to study the permeability barrier of yeast nuclear pore complexes. They show that karyopherins remodel a central plug that shapes barrier dynamics and disorder within the pore.

The authors demonstrate that with appropriate control, a typical stick-slip nanopositioner can simultaneously deliver nanometer precision, macroscale range, and hundreds-of-hertz resonance frequency, enabling cross-scale, high-bandwidth atomic force microscopy.

The authors present AFM seesaw cantilevers (SSCs) that separate the cantilever’s mechanical and laser-reflective functions to a rigid board and torsional hinges, respectively. The SSCs readily allow biomolecular high-speed AFM imaging.

Three papers show that Vipp1, a plastid ESCRT-III protein, can form sheets, spirals and regular polygons on flat membranes and tubulate the membranes within stacked rings and helices. This work provides a framework for how Vipp1 can deliver lipids for thylakoid membrane biogenesis and protect and repair the membranes during photosynthesis.

Living organisms and soft materials pose specific challenges to metrology, as Pavao Andričević and Hüsnü Aslan explain.

An article in Communications Engineering presents a technique for the 3D reconstruction of nanoscale objects that uses atomic force microscopy and a computer vision algorithm.

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is coupled with time-domain two-dimensional infrared (2DIR) spectroscopy to develop AFM-2DIR nanospectroscopy, which combines the spatial precision of AFM with the rich spectroscopic information provided by 2DIR spectroscopy. Application of this method reveals the anharmonicity of a carbonyl vibrational mode and the possible energy transfer pathways of hyperbolic phonon polaritons in isotope-rich hexagonal boron nitride.

Advances in atomic force microscopy (AFM) techniques and methodologies for microbiology contribute to our understanding of the microbial cell surface. Recent studies show that AFM imaging of cells and membranes at (near) molecular resolution allows detailed visualization of membranes interacting with drugs.